"Wave don't beat the Wave": How Willie Fritz built a winner at Tulane

Football is a funny business. Willie Fritz has been in coaching for four decades, and a head coach continuously for 30 seasons. He's won titles in five separate conferences, played for four national championships, and has his own bust in the National Junior College Athletic Association Hall of Fame. Chances are, he did not become a significantly better coach between 2021 and 2022.

And yet, after 2021's 2-10 season, Fritz was not a featured speaker at the 2022 AFCA convention. Following Tulane's 2022 breakthrough -- an FBS-record 10-game turnaround, the school's first conference title in a quarter century, its first New Year's Six win in nearly a full century, an AP Top 10 ranking -- Fritz was on the main stage, speaking to thousands of his colleagues at last month's convention.

Chances are, many of these same pearls of the Fritz Filosophy existed after Win No. 14, Win No. 67 and Win No. 154 just as they did after Win No. 236 -- Tulane's stunning Cotton Bowl comeback over USC -- only we weren't ready to hear them.

Fritz started his presentation with 39 coaching principles, ranging from big picture ("Have a motor! Hustle at all times!") to a small snapshot ("Take water breaks when needed.")

Fritz then moved on to his "Plan to Win." The five factors he emphasizes are similar to what we track each week throughout the fall with Winning Box Scores. Though I've yet to circle back to close the book on the 2022 numbers, in general teams that win the turnover battle win at a .736 clip, and teams that control the running game win at a .759 mark. 

Fritz is a coach who takes pride in doing the little things. "I drove the bus to three national championship games," he said. "I'm proud of that." He now leaves transportation to the professionals, but Fritz made a point of having his players see the Tulane coaches unload bags from their charter buses on the Green Wave's Cotton Bowl trip.

Point 3 appears vague on the surface, until Fritz outlined how Tulane "wins" the kicking game. Every possible outcome to a special teams play is assigned a point value.

Tulane's success on special teams starts before each unit hits the field. On second down, special teams coordinator Robby Discher (a former FootballScoop Special Teams Coordinator of the Year) begins calling out for the appropriate unit to assemble in the launch pad. The rest of the staff then echoes that call. All 11 players then stand in their designated spot within the launch pad (or less, if one of the players on, say, the punt team is already on the field with the offense) and, crucially, only those 11 players are anywhere near the launch pad.

What is the launch pad? It's an actual pad, with circles for each player 1 through 11, placed between the down markers. Fritz showed a TV clip that proved Tulane's discipline in this regard: the defense was on the field, the punt return unit waited in the launch pad between the down markers and nobody else was inside the sticks. When third down became fourth, there was no confusion within the 100-plus person organization as to which 11 players belonged on the field.

Attention to detail spreads well beyond special teams. In fact, Fritz demands that his ball carriers physically hand the ball to the referees. "These guys are usually 50-plus years old. They don't need to be bending over to pick up the ball," he said. Fritz said he got an email from Australia after the Cotton Bowl praising his team for dutifully handing the ball to the officials.

Fritz also emphasized the importance of forcing and limiting turnovers -- what coach doesn't? -- but placed the burden for success in this area on himself. "I'm the ball security coach," he said. "I'm the takeaway coach."

After finishing 121st in turnover margin in 2021, Tulane was 41st in 2022: forcing 20 turnovers while surrendering 16, reversing a 12-to-25 ratio from a year ago.

An hour in Willie Fritz's Filosophy was likely the same in January 2023 following Tulane's 12-2 season as it would've been following the Wave's 2-10 campaign in January 2022. The size of the audience would've been smaller, but the truths are eternal